Irina Gaidamachuk, a 39-year-old mother of two, is alleged to be Russia’s worst female serial killer. Police charged her with 17 murders last week

Slideshow: Killer women

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Photograph: Hulton Archive

To her family and neighbours, Irina Gaidamachuk seemed perfectly ordinary. Her
relatives and neighbours knew she drank heavily and lived on the breadline
but she was charming, kind and, they believed, completely harmless.

Now the 39-year-old mother of two is alleged to be Russia’s worst female
serial killer. After an eight-year manhunt, police in the Urals charged her
with 17 murders last week.

Sources close to the investigation said she had confessed shortly after her
arrest earlier this month.

Gaidamachuk is alleged to have killed elderly women who lived alone in order
to steal their meagre savings. Police say she got hold of a regional list of
pensioners and set out to befriend them, often by offering to redecorate
their flats or carry out household chores.

The killer showed such ferocity that for several years police believed it was
a man. The skulls of victims were smashed with objects, including